In the most jam-packed hour of Apple announcements ever, Apple CEO Tim Cook sounded like he'd had maybe an extra cup of coffee on April 20.

Cook launched Apple's "Spring loaded" virtual event with the cool addition of family cards to Apple's credit card, changes to the podcast app, updates to the Apple TV including a new remote control that will also be sold separately (thank god!), a purple iPhone, a new season of Ted Lasso, the introduction of AirTags, a new small iMac, and, finally, the updated iPad Pro.

For more detail, I also did a rundown of the brightly colored new iMac, my colleague Jonathan Vanian has you covered for Airtags, and CNET's Katie Collins runs down the features of the updated iPad Pro. But I wanted to highlight some of the deeper and perhaps overlooked trends underlying what's going at Apple.

Podcasting goes premium

One of Cook's first announcements was Apple's revamp of its blah podcasting app with some new features such as channels. But then Cook dropped the bomb: Apple would allow podcasters to charge subscription fees for the first time. Premium podcasts would have to give Apple a cut of the revenue, but could still include their own advertising without sharing those dollars, and would not have to make their programs exclusive to Apple.

With Spotify also getting on board the premium podcasting train, the changes for the burgeoning industry could be staggering.

First, until now, podcasters have been able to distribute their shows by listing on a simple RSS feed. Apple and all other podcast platforms picked up links from the same open-to-all feed. But for premium shows, Apple and Spotify will require podcasters to list on their proprietary services, which aren't open to anyone else. Breaking RSS could be the end of the open podcast environment, which could lead to consolidation around just a few big players.

Second, a whole bunch of small services that have catered to podcasters and other creators may lose out and wither away now that the two giants are offering premium options. Patreon, Memberful, Podia and many others will have a tougher time with Apple and Spotify in the game.

Fintech—family size!

Credit cards are a somewhat questionable but boring and convenient way to pay for things. Apple's first foray into the field, partnering with Goldman Sachs, was all of these things.

On April 20, however, Cook announced two big new features for the Apple Card. First, a couple can now share one account, but both people will get credit on their all-important credit histories. That breaks the industry's terrible common practice where only one spouse on a joint account develops a credit history.

Second, Apple will let adults grant their kids a limited version of the card with the option for spending limits and reporting transactions back to the parental account. As someone who has struggled to oversee three teens with a shared family credit card (which started out "only for emergencies" but has morphed into all manner of allowed exceptions now), let me say that if this works as advertised, it will be a valuable breakthrough.

But it may be an unwelcome break to the many fintech startups that have been innovating in the area of family budgets, tracking family spending, and helping kids with credit. Oops.

Is that a PC in your tablet?

After a decade of relying on souped-up A-series iPhone chips, on April 20 Apple announced it was adding its M1 chip to the iPad Pro. That's the super-souped-up chip Apple created last year for its Mac computers to replace Intel CPUs. The new iPads also got a lot more memory, up to 16 GB, just like many of Apple's Mac computers. Hmm.

Remember that those M1-powered Apple computers, including the new iMac announced on April 20, have prompted most Mac software developers to rewrite their apps, such as Adobe Photoshop, to run natively on the chip. So now that the iPad Pro has that same chip—and enough RAM to run MacOS programs—is there another shoe to drop? Maybe at Apple's WWDC in June, the iPad Pro will get to run pro applications too.

Antitrust, shmantitrust

Apple, along with its Big Tech brethren, has been under the gun for the past year or more for allegedly thwarting competition across the tech economy. Apple has been accused of monopolizing mobile apps, charging too much from developers, stealing ideas from smaller companies, and generally misbehaving as one of the two dominant smartphone platforms.

So has Apple been humbled or chastised? Have the Cupertino kids lost a little of their swagger?

Nope.

April 20's announcements included Airtags, which look an awful lot like the product Tile has been selling for years, only with much better integration into the iPhone's software that only Apple can grant. Meanwhile, Tile and Apple were scheduled to face off April 21 at a Senate hearing on antitrust.

Also, the new premium podcast program includes the same 70/30 first-year revenue split between creators and Apple that has drawn so much criticism (and so many lawsuits) in other areas like apps and games.

Maybe Apple's next event should be called "Summer unbowed."